BRETON TROUT STREAMS 55 



seat of his small trousers, while the saint 

 plays on in tune with happy laughter. 



At the lonely farm of Kestrec a third 

 fire smoulders. An hour ago it roared 

 and blazed, but now the night gi*ows late. 

 One by one the peasants have crept away, 

 leaving the dying embers to the spirits of 

 the dead. The foremost has arrived 

 already, for old Jean Gratien is more a 

 spectre than a living man, so ancient and 

 beyond his time is he. He crouches low, 

 his listless hands lie still upon the bowl of 

 brass. The reeds are silent, only the 

 white lips move. This is no Catholic 

 canticle we hear, but a barbaric dirge, 

 mouthed in Old Breton, an unknown 

 tongue we may not understand, and yet 

 the eyes are speaking. They grow older 

 than the cromlech stones. They gaze 

 beyond us, seeing the whole travail of the 

 world. They peer into deep waters where 

 the hopes of men lie dead. They reach all 

 gladness and all pain, even to those depths 

 which shroud all things unutterable. Their 

 lids are seamed with sorrow and with tears. 



Is it a trick of fancy that old Gratien is 

 transformed ? His clothes have bleached, 



